Do you believe 2000-2010 was a lost decade for the US economy?

Well, it was not a lost decade, but it was an economic downturn, culminating in a recession.

It was a very difficult decade for the economy, in my opinion, for the country and many of the citizens themselves but not a lost decade.

Wouldn’t it be nice to think that it was, since it is turning 2011 in a couple weeks?

The rich got richer, for them the decade was very nice. CEO’s of the banks are going to get more record bonuses this year. The forclosure businiess is booming and the mortgage service companies are making record profits.
The only loss this decade was to our civil liberties and the average joe’s income and lifestyle.
We the people have been used and abused, not lost.
But as usual, this is just my opinion.

This has been the first decade since the Great Depression when the American middle class lost income in real terms. The average middle class American made less in real dollars in 2010 than in 2000. And for the first time since the Great Depression, the middle class shrank instead of growing while the number of poor grew dramatically. The rich got VERY much richer, and executive pay went up dramatically.

We’re facing a double whammy. Corporatism, and increasingly fascistic ideology has seized the Republican right and been sold widely to the American public. Funded by billionaires and major corporations, right-wing think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and many more have been carefully crafting messages intended to sell the public on distrust of government, the embrace of deregulation in favor of corporate self policing, and distaste for any change in the continued flow of wealth to the most wealthy. It has been an enormous success. The intellectuals working in the right-wing think tanks have miraculously sold Americans on an instinctive distrust of liberal intellectuals as “elitists” and eggheads. This done by a group of people that are as elitist and egg-headed as anyone can get.

On top of this, globalization which was sold by the corporatist because it vastly benefits them, is beginning to level the wage and living standard playing field. This had to happen at some point. The US has about 4% of the world’s population but had consistently been using 25% of its energy. Our high wages and McMansion lifestyle were out of kilter with almost the entire population of Earth. And this isn’t a problem we are going to solve overnight. To some degree, we do have to help the developing world develop. But we could do something about the wage and wealth inequity if we can wake the poorly educated and increasingly anti-intellectual, anti-rational public up to what’s causing their malaise and how it could easily be fixed without destroying the incentives to entrepreneurship in the process.

@ETpro – You left out the hatred of unions. This is what bugs me most. A lot of people died so we could have them to keep workplaces safe and provide living wages.

@ETpro One thing to bear in mind here is that 4 in 10 Americans still hold Creationist views The reason I bring up this apparent non sequitor is a couple of lines from the article:

“Americans’ views on human origins varied significantly by level of education and religion, the poll found. Those with less education were more likely to hold a creationist view that God created life thousands of years ago, while college graduates were more likely to hold one of the two viewpoints involving evolution. ”

and

“A significantly higher percentage of Republicans indicated a creationist view of human origins, which Gallup experts say reflects in part the strong relationship between religion and politics in contemporary America. ”

Combined with other things I’ve seen, such as the general decline in education over the years, that tells me that we have fewer people that actually understand the issues and more people willing to believe sound bites like the 2010 Lie of the Year. People do not want to think for themselves, and it only takes one willful Shepard to round up thousands or milions of sheep.

@world_hello Thanks. I certainly don’t want to see unions disappear, but I do want to see them evolve. Through featherbedding, insisting on unsustainable wage/benefit packages and protecting incompetent workers from disciplinary action or dismissal,; unions have partly been the architects of their own downturn.

Most Americans today aren’t even aware that over 10 workers each day used to die in mining accidents, the companies paid so little to miners that they ended up perpetually in debt to the company store and unable to escape their lowly, dangerous conditions, and when workers began to organize, companies hired teams of thugs to come in and beat them into submission. Union organizers were routinely lynched. The Pinkerton Detective Agency supplied many of the strong-arm thugs to stop unionization. The US Government eventually had to send the US Army into Appalachia to stop the murders.

@jerv Thanks for the added points. Certainly the war on science being waged by the religious right does not auger well for America’s future in the 21st century and beyond. I just end up writing such daunting wall-of-word posts when I get going on this subject that I sometimes feel compelled to leave important details out. I might take the time to write a book on it if more Americans could read well enough to make out what it said.

@ETpro Thanks for your first paragraph ^^^^^ re the unions. All I can say is AMEN to that.

@ram201pa You are welcome. I try to look at both sides of all issues. After all, I own a small business and am trying my best to succeed with it. But take the second paragraph to heart as well. Unions have their problems but so do corporations. The Enron debacle, Countrywide, Bernie Madoff, Wall Street’s casino capitalism meltdown, the Mine deaths in West Virginia and the BP disaster in the Gulf all are just behind us. We’d be utter fools to think that destroying all worker negotiating power and trusting all worker care, safety, pay and regulatory power to corporations who in many cases can profit most from exploitation is going to be a better solution than a reasonable balance of power.

We might look to Germany for a model. There, workers from the shop floor and unions serve on the corporate boards along with financial wizards and former CEOs. These people hear firsthand the competitive threats their company faces and can help moderate irrational union demands. I’d like to see the dirty greed washed out of US unions, but I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

IMO the past decade was just fine….a bit tumultuous when you factor in the effect and impact of 9/11 had on 2002. 2002 through 2006 were very robust years for business overall on up to a peak record year of 2008. Last quarter into 2009 was a train wreck and we are finally able to feel the bottom of the economy and IMO 2011 will begin to show signs of healing and recovery.

The most outstanding component of the past decade was the lack of savings and disciplined money management by many households. Credit was and is at an all time high and a cancer that has decimated the stability of our economy.

i’m with @ETpro….

i think the last decade has seen Capitalism tighten it’s icy grip into the steely fist of fascism, we have seen how the survival of Capitalism is crucially dependent on interventionism, both foreign and domestic, rather than thriving within a spirit of free market participation. i’m beginning to sound like Milton Friedman…things must be bad in other words you are going to have Capitalism or else!

We have also witnessed the rise and rise of China as a competing economy, who has morphed from a drearily oppressive sprawling communist regime into, yep you guessed it, a Nationalistic anti union, undemocratic, Bona fide Fascist state, in fact if you superimposed America onto China you would have the largest exemplar of Fascism the world has ever known and to top it all off, we have muslim elements who aren’t into the economy at all, but just want a slice of the action, exporting their own chillingly radical version, just to keep things interesting.

So, no i don’t think it has been a good decade socio-econimcally speaking…

@Cruiser That may be true in some income brackets, but there are those of us who didn’t save for other reasons.

I know that you meant undisciplined people like my in-laws who spent like they actually had more money than they did and got buried in debt, but the truth is that there are a lot of people who just didn’t have the means to do the perfectly responsible thing.

Remember, being rich actually saves you money; some things are more expensive for us mortals. There are things that you may buy outright that would require many Americans to take out a loan or put it on plastic, and those not only accrue interest, but do so at a higher rate than they would for someone rich enough to just pay cash. Things I can think of off the top of my head are cars and healthcare; you and I can afford insurance, but many pay 100% out-of-pocket when they go to the doctor, or they put off necessary care for financial reasons. I know I used to.

Now, if you paid your entire net income just for basic housing that is relatively low-cost for the area and had to occasionally decide between food or gas money to get to work the next day, how much would you be socking away into your portfolio? I am fortunate that I can now afford to “lose” 5% of my income to a 401k, but I wasn’t always able to, and there are tens of millions that still can’t afford that. So when you talk about the economy, don’t just look at your peers and those above you; look all around.

@jerv: there’s a point where you get so poor that you pretty much eat what you can too. A high-calorie meal is often cheaper than a healthy low-calorie meal, but when you don’t know where your next bite is coming from, you go with the high-calorie option. It helps explain why poor people sometimes get so fat.

@bolwerk…with accompanying medical problems lille heart disease and diabetes, which cost a lot to deal with.

It was a difficult and disheartening decade for many people who assumed America is immune to economic catastrophe. I don’t think it was wasted or lost though. Actually I think this was important for a few generations of people who hadn’t been through hard times before. I believe it forced people to new spending habits and some they found are worth keeping. I also think it was an important decade for people to be realistic about what higher education can and can’t do; some people were geared from childhood to expect a better living just by attending a few years of college and showing proof of a degree.

I hate to even bring this up, but I don’t think you seen nuffin yet. Better prepare, ‘cause hard times are on their way. The US dollar is going to tank, and I seriously doubt there’s anyone in a position to bail us out. : (

@CaptainHarley We could prevent that, but realistically I don’t think we will do what it takes to avoid that fate. As for getting bailed out, we owe too many people too much money to take out more loans.
I am glad I am accustomed to hard times, but I see a lot of people completely losing their minds when the bottom really drops out.

@ETpro I have to agree with you in your first post especially. The last decade was horrible and the effects are still being felt from it. I’m not going by what I’ve read on the net, news or in papers and my thoughts have nothing to do with being brainwashed by any specific propaganda. I’m going by what I see happening right in front of my face and what I know has happened to other people I knew and formerly worked with as well. If it wasn’t for the unemployment extensions many would be homeless right now. Gee what are you supposed to do when you were used to making $20phr (good money where I live since it’s a cheap area), lose your job and have bills to pay where you balanced your budget on what you were used to making? Work at Burger King or Wal-Mart?

Obviously the people who aren’t hurting or didn’t lose their jobs will claim the economy isn’t that bad. I didn’t know if you put a paper bag over your head and you can’t see something occuring that must mean it’s not happening. Too bad for those other poor suckers, it must be their own faults. Most people I know aren’t riding the unemployment extensions out but really were trying to look for decent work. I’m still thankful for Obama increasing the extensions where I was able to collect beyond the first 6 months or I would be homeless right now myself. I was able to get back on my feet until I started working again.

There used to be an industrial strip about 10 miles from my house which housed a total of 6 different industries which living in a rural area employed 90% of the area. Now they are all gone, each one closing gradually one at a time during the last decade. There were 2 other industrial parks about 20 miles from me with each one in an opposite direction from me and except for 2 places all the other ones have closed down as well. Obviously the 2 other places aren’t hiring new people for those employees are thankful they just have a job.

@jerv

I agree. I also see an awful lot of people rioting, and lots of social unrest. I’m doing my best to prepare for it, but I don’t make enough money to properl prepare. : (

@CaptainHarley Might be best that way actually. Usually the first place the looters go is where the stuff is, so the better prepared you are the juicier a target you will be when the shit hits the fan.

To me this decade was a flat economic one in that the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2000 was 11,700 and today it is hitting around 11,400. It sort of reminds me of the flat Dow in the early 1970’s to early 1980’s when it was around 1000.

I’m no expert on this but I think that with all the turmoil brewing in the world and in the U.S. Congress a flat Dow Jones Industrial Average is about the best that we can expect in the future.

What about Google, Amazon and Ebay?